


Heartbreak

by indigo (indigo_angels)



Series: Fairy Dust [9]
Category: The A-Team (2010), The A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 20:49:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14838911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_angels/pseuds/indigo
Summary: All is going well in Face's life but has he reached the end of his luck? An old foe raises its head once more.





	Heartbreak

Face pushed the cart down the aisle, humming quietly under his breath as he considered the supplies they’d need in for the Superbowl. It was unseasonably warm and Murdock had cast his vote for a barbeque, repeatedly, but BA and Jonny were huge Bears fans and actually wanted to _watch_ the game so Hannibal had, gently, put his foot down and the decision had been made to go for oven-ready snacks, something that Adele had suggested from her cousin’s house in Chicago, something that four slightly tipsy men and two over-excited children couldn’t possibly ruin, she’d added sagely. Face smiled at that comment – Adele Baracus knew her family so well – and went back to staring at all the neat little boxes of frozen treats, trying to pick things that would appeal to everyone’s tastes.

 

They were lucky to be at home for the day, Face had memories of Superbowls watched all over the world that he could flick back to. But they were on a few weeks of down-time after the last round of missions that had worn them all out.

 

It was crazy, really, they shouldn’t even have been doing the job anymore. Just over a year ago, Face had found himself suspended after he had shot and killed a child who’d been carrying explosives and heading for a packed out Mosque. It hadn’t been pretty and as much as he’d been cleared of any illegal actions, the whole experience had been so damn awful that he’d resigned his commission and set in motion his last few months as a Ranger.

 

However – just like almost every other aspect of his life – things had certainly not gone to plan. He was planning on leaving, Hannibal on retiring, they had a family vacation in Mexico booked and plans to do very little for the next few months when everything went to hell with Murdock’s disappearance.

 

Standing at the neat rows of freezer cabinets, Face shivered at the memory. It had been their last day in Mexico, Hannibal had gone to take Jonny for one last float through the Lazy River whilst Face went back to their rooms so that Sophia could dry her hair for the trip home. He’d been leaning on the balcony, watching out for Hannibal and Jonny when his phone had rung in his pocket, the conversation which followed was so awful it was almost burnt into his memory.

 

___________

 

“Hey, Big Guy, how’s it going?”

 

Picking out two very familiar silhouettes approaching along the path from the pools, Face smiled and raised his hand in greeting even as he opened his conversation with BA.

 

There was a pause on the line, Face blamed the distance at first and then BA spoke, “Hey, Faceman. You with the Colonel?” and just like that, Face knew something truly awful had happened. He straightened up from the railing, glancing behind to make sure that Sophia was busy with her hair-drier, his stomach tight in anguish. 

 

“He’s on his way back with Jonny. What’s happened?” BA paused again and Face waited, heart thumping against his ribs as he could almost hear BA wrestling with himself as to whether he should spill the beans immediately, or wait for Hannibal to return. Face knew what he’d prefer and hissed a plaintive, “BA…” down the line.

 

There was a sigh then, a long, shuddering one and Face could imagine BA rubbing a hand through his Mohawk as it sounded in his ear and then, “Fuck, man,” Face closed his eyes, “Murdock’s MIA.”

 

Even though he’d been expecting it, even though it wasn’t actually as bad as it could have been, hearing those words turned his legs to jelly and he sank into one of the balcony chairs, his hand going to his head and holding on tightly.

 

“What happened?”

 

“He was shot down. In insurgent controlled territory, there’s been no sign of him since.”

 

Through the glass walls of the balcony, Face could see Hannibal and Jonny making their way home, hand in hand, both dressed in nothing but their swim wear and leaving two mismatched sets of wet footprints behind them and his heart ached. Why was he never destined to get a happy ending? Why was it when one aspect of his life began to shimmer and shine in its brilliance, another nose-dived into oblivion?

 

“What’s been done?”

 

“Search sorties have been dispatched. I’m flying over there now, if they can locate the crash-sight then it’s gonna be tight getting a team in there fast enough.”

 

_Fast enough._

If Murdock and any of his team had survived the crash, then the insurgents would be on the look-out for them as well. They would be better placed to get there first and if they did, then the entire team would be executed and their deaths uploaded to YouTube for the whole world to see – it was a depressingly frequent conclusion for any soldier unfortunate enough to go missing behind enemy lines. He rubbed at his head, knowing without a shadow of a doubt what Hannibal's reaction to this would be.

 

“We’re coming over as well. We’re leaving here in five hours; we’ll be over on the first transport we can. What’s the chance of Adele meeting us at the airport to take the kids?”

 

And that had been that. By the time Hannibal and Jonny slopped their way into the rooms, Sophia was carefully straightening her hair and Face had made enough phone calls to get himself and Hannibal back on their way to the sandbox.  

 

It had been a tense and incredibly stressful journey, Face and Hannibal had sat in silence knowing that with every single passing minute the chances of finding Murdock before the local militia was sliding down a steep curve into nothing. They landed in the middle of the night and stepped from the plane and Face’s eye was drawn to the single figure jogging over the tarmac to meet them. He knew then, just as he had with BA’s call, that this was something huge. That messenger was here for them and whatever he was about to tell them was going to change the direction of their lives for good.

 

The young Private drew to a halt in front of them, throwing them both a salute which they hastily returned. “Well?” Hannibal's anxiety was making him snappy.

 

“Message from Sergeant Baracus, sirs,” Hannibal nodded impatiently, “He says to tell you that ‘the fool’s been found’ and he’s in the field hospital at Echo. He’s got some broken ribs and some burns, otherwise, he’s okay. I think he’s referring to Captain Murdock there.”

 

Yet again, Face’s knees buckled with the emotion and he sat back on his heels, pinching the bridge of his nose to try and keep himself under control.

 

“And the rest of his team?” Hannibal seemed to be holding it together better than Face.

 

“One fatality in the crash-landing, sir, Corporal Jones, otherwise all safe and recovering in Echo.”

 

It had been a near miss, a very, very, close call but it was enough to make both Hannibal and Face think again. They hadn’t spoken of it then, had waited until they finally got the chance to crawl into a bed some thirty-two hours later, sliding into each other’s arms as they did every night and then Hannibal spoke into Face’s hair. “We can’t leave without them.”

 

“I know.”

 

“What do you think, then?”

 

Face had sighed and hoped to hell that his children would forgive him, “We stick it out. Stay as long as they do. Try and get them to see sense.”

 

___________________

 

Hannibal's postponed retirement had been gleefully accepted, even with the condition that he got his old unit back – including Face, including a long-overdue promotion. Face himself had very mixed feelings about it all but it had been clear from the moment that he’d told Hannibal the dreadful news that the Colonel would be going back and there just was no way in heaven or Earth that Face could let him do that alone and fortunately for him, the children had been very pragmatic about the entire thing. Face being away for regular periods of time was what they were used to, all that they really knew, even Sophia, and with Face and his Army life came their school, their friends, the base where they spent so much of their time, it was all linked and all they’d ever had – they were accepting that it would continue for a few years longer.

 

It was only temporary, Hannibal promised him, and they had struck a bit of a deal with Murdock and BA who might not have agreed to leave the service completely, but did agree to stop active service. Two more years, that’s what he’d been assured. Two years of working for the very people who’d doubted his word and his professional integrity and then he’d be done with them all forever. Face could cope with that – in his head it wasn’t them he was working for anyway, it was Hannibal and BA and Murdock – working hard to ensure that they too could come home at the end of it all and have a happy ever after of their own.

 

Back in the store, Face shook himself and went back to examining the little boxes, wondering exactly how ‘hot’ the ‘hot ‘n’ spicy’ chicken wings would be when his phone suddenly buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out and answered it without really looking – Hannibal was at the garage with his car and Face was expecting him to ask for a lift – but the voice that answered in reply to his cheery, “Hey,” most certainly wasn’t Hannibal's. 

 

There had been a pause as Face selected two boxes of chicken wings and then a tentative sounding, “Captain Peck?” sounded in his ear.  

 

Instantly, just like with BA before, Face _knew._ He dropped the chicken into his cart and let the freezer cabinet take his weight as his knees turned to jello. “Yes?”

 

“This is Ms. Mayflower, from McBride.”

 

It wasn’t the first time that Face had taken calls from the school; Jonny seemed to take after his dad when it came to the ease in which he found a situation in which to injure himself and in addition to that he sometimes found it more tempting to play for laughs at school rather than toe the line. This time though, Face knew for certain that this wasn’t a call about a bust nose after falling from the Jungle Gym or a reprimand after singing in a squeaky voice during morning service and, as if they had a mind of their own, Face’s jelloed legs left his cart behind and started walking towards the exit. “Yes?”

 

The pause again, never a good sign and then, “I’m afraid there is a problem with Sophia,” Face’s legs quickened their pace, there was _never_ a problem with Sophia. “She complained of chest pains in volleyball and sat out, but I’m afraid she collapsed. We have the EMTs here now, they’re taking her to hospital.”

 

Face was at his car and trying hard not to vomit as he slid into auto-pilot and searched frantically for his keys in his pockets. “Her heart… Fuck – is it her heart?” and why was he asking the school Principle? Why was he _swearing_ _at_ the school Principle? What was wrong with him?

 

“I don’t know,” Ms. Mayflower sounded on the edge of tears. “But they’re taking her to Martin, they said to tell you to go straight there.”

 

“Straight there…” Face had found his keys and was sliding inside the car, finding himself wondering if that could possibly be construed as good – he very much doubted it was. “Okay, right, thanks.” What else was there to say? “Was she still alive?” he had no idea where those words came from, they were in his head, of course they were, they had been from the moment that Ms Mayflower had spoken but he’d never planned to say them out loud, never planned to acknowledge them to the Principle.

 

The silence dragged on, there was something that sounded dreadfully like a sob and then Ms Mayflower spoke again. “They used a defibrillator to get her heart beating again before they took her away. She was still with us, when she left here, she was fighting.”

 

Face closed his eyes and clamped down hard on the sudden tightness in his throat, the scream he felt just wanting to explode out into the balmy afternoon. The engine of his car was roaring into life before he’d even realised he turned the key and terminated his call with the school and without conscious thought and then he was in motion, pulling out into the steady traffic and forcing himself to stay calm – crashing his car would be no good to anyone.

 

In the back of his mind Face had always known this day was coming. Sophia had been so well, had recovered from her early operations so completely that it was sometimes hard to remember that her heart would never, ever be fixed. The treatment for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome had been so very new when Sophia had been born and Face was painfully aware that many babies died before the three separate surgeries they needed could be performed. Sophia had been lucky, she’d made it through and they’d had all these trouble free years in between then and now but Face had always known… it was just the way his life was destined to be.

 

He considered calling Hannibal as he drove but then shied away from that. It was like travelling to Iraq for Murdock all over again. What would he find at the hospital when he finally arrived? Would she be there, waiting for him? Fighting to stay as the Principle had put it? Or would she have gone? Was she already with her mom, watching him, her angel’s heart aching for what she knew was waiting for him when he got to Martin? If he could spare Hannibal and the others this same trauma wasn’t that a kindness? Surely it was better to call with definite news rather than this just not knowing?

 

Then he was there. For a moment he almost swung the car around to the Cardiac Centre where they had their regular check-ups but then he remembered that this was not a regular thing, that Sophia had actually _died_ in her school gym and only the defib had brought her back to life. Instead he swung the car towards the ER and abandoned it in the first space he could find. After that he was running, his desperate attempts at calm were failing him as he looked up at the huge white building and pleaded with her to stay with him.

 

He’d done this before, he realised, over Hannibal, Murdock, BA, bursting into an A&E unit, blood thumping in his ears as he tried to still his panic but it had never been like this, never been this utterly, absolutely terrifying. “Sophia Peck,” his hands were shaking by the time he reached the desk and he realised he had no idea where his car keys had got to. “She was brought here by ambulance from McBride Elementary School. Eleven years old. Cardiac arrest. She’s my daughter.” His voice caught on that last word and he had to clamp his lips together to keep from begging the kind-looking woman from behind the counter not to let Sophia die on him.

 

The tragic look in her eyes didn’t help him and he was aware of whispers and stares from behind as others with their sprained ankles and bumped heads stared and were glad it wasn’t them standing there.

 

“Hold on a moment,” she slid out of her seat and Face was left trying to blink away his threatening tears, wondering what the fuck he’d done with his keys and if he would get to see her before she died, if he’d ever get to talk with her, hold her, again…

 

“Mr. Peck?” it was another woman standing in front of him, and this one looked less tragic and more business-like than the one from behind the desk and again Face found himself wondering if that was a good sign or not.

 

“Captain,” he corrected automatically and then felt an ass for doing so. “Is she alright?”

 

“Come with me,” she turned and walked away and Face trailed after her, “I’ll explain everything to you.”

 

They walked through the heavy double doors at a brisk, efficient pace and Face stared into every cubicle, every corridor hoping for a glimpse of the first person who’d ever truly loved him. He knew he was on a countdown, in a matter of seconds this women, whoever the hell she was, would tell him if Sophia was still alive or not, yet again, this was the calm before the tipping point, the junction where his life veered off into two wildly different directions.

 

They came to a door marked, ‘Family Room’ and Face’s guide slid the plastic marker to, ‘Engaged’ before leading him in and gesturing for him to sit on one of the low backed chairs. “Is she alright?” the barely-supressed panic was starting to eat away at him.

 

“Sophia suffered a cardiac arrest at school this afternoon,” _I know_ , Face felt like screaming. “The staff of the school administered CPR until help arrived and the attending EMTs managed to shock her back heart into a reasonable rhythm.”

 

Face closed his eyes in thanks.

 

“She remains a very sick little girl, but we have her reasonably stable now and are investigating what caused the arrest to occur.”

 

“She has Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.”

 

The woman smiled kindly at him. “We know. We’ve pulled her records and paged Dr. Barstow, he’s on his way down now. My name is Dr. Fisher, I’m one of the ER doctors here.”

 

“Thank you,” Face felt ridiculously like crying. “Can I see her?”

 

“Of course. I can take you down now although we’ll have to leave once Dr. Barstow arrives. He’ll need to examine her as a matter of urgency.”

 

Face was already on his feet. “That’s fine.”

 

Dr. Fisher turned to the door and they walked back out into the corridor. “We have her in a high-dependency unit within the ER at present, although I would imagine she will be moved just as soon as Dr. Barstow has assessed her.” Face nodded, his mind seeming to have stuck on the miracle that she was still alive. “We have sedated her and are helping out with her breathing and circulation so you will see a lot of equipment around her.” Face nodded, he remembered all of that from her brushes with death as an infant. “And while she might not appear awake or be able to communicate with you, we have no doubt that she will know you are there and will be able to hear your words. Alright?” he nodded again. He and Sophia were close; she always seemed to know when he was there.

 

They pushed through a curtain and then she was there and despite everything Face had just been told, everything that he remembered from years gone by, the sight of her in that huge bed looking too pale and tiny and frail almost knocked him to his knees and he needed a moment until he could cross to her side.

 

“Sophia?” she didn’t move or flicker as he forced her name out from his tight throat and his shaking hand reached out to smooth away her thick, black hair. “Can you hear me, sweetheart?” Still nothing and Face had to squeeze his eyes closed to keep the tears at bay. “It’s alright, you know,” he leant in and kissed her cool forehead. “Everything is going to be just fine. Dr. Barstow is on his way over and he’s going to fix you up again, good as new, okay? And I’ll be here, all the time, just waiting for you. You here that, Soph? Waiting for you to wake up again.” It was as if he said it, then it would actually happen, the words would make it true.

 

There was no reply from Sophia, nothing except the hiss of the ventilator and the steady beeping of the heart monitor and Face felt about for her hand, cold and limp and held it in his, staring at her face and trying to remember every single subtle nuance to it all.

 

“Face?” the voice behind him startled him and he looked around into the concerned eyes of Dr. Barstow. He’d been Sophia’s cardiologist since their move down from Washington and over the course of four appointments a year for eight years, had become well known to each other.

 

Face peeled himself away from Sophia to shake the doctor’s hand. “Doctor.”

 

“An unexpected set-back,” Barstow crossed to Sophia’s side and studied her still face, “There was nothing to indicate any issues at her last check-up.”

 

“I know,” since her operations, Sophia hadn’t even been on any regular medication. “So what do you think this is?”

 

Indicating with his head, Barstow took Face to the far side of the room and Sophia’s notes. “I already know what it is,” he picked up the ECG trace that the ER staff had made of her rhythm and even to Face’s untrained eyes he knew it was very wrong. “I can see from this that Sophia has a _coarctation_ , a thinning, of the aorta. It had led to a blockage in her heart and the arrest she suffered this afternoon.”

 

“A blockage?” Face stared at the ECG, “What? Like cholesterol or something?”

 

“Unlikely,” Barstow was flicking backwards and forwards through Sophia’s notes. “Far more likely to be scar tissue from one of her operations. It can continue to thicken over time and finally cause a problem. I think once we take a proper look, that’s what we’ll find.”

 

“A proper look?” Face glanced at his still daughter. “Open heart surgery? Again?” he wasn’t sure he could live through another day of that.

 

“Probably not,” Barstow put the notes down again. “Hopefully we can do this as keyhole. We can push a tube in there, inflate a balloon in her aorta, hopefully stretch the scar tissue a little wider. It’s a very simple procedure we do on adults all the time.”

 

“And on children?”

 

“Irregularly. But it’s proven to be successful over and over again.”

 

Face nodded. He trusted Barstow completely, after all he was the one who had kept Sophia healthy for all these years, but he still had to ask. “What could go wrong?”

 

Barstow held Face’s eye and lowered his voice. “She could die, just like with any operation, but she stands an excellent chance of success, ninety-nine percent chance in fact. Much better than the original operations she endured.”

 

Ten percent, that’s all she’d been given back then, a ten percent chance that she would live to see a month old. Ninety-nine was a whole lot better than that. “And without the operation?”

 

“No,” Barstow shook his head sadly. “She wouldn’t see the week out. This condition is untenable for her now, treatable, but untenable.”

 

Face nodded. “Okay, so we do it?”

 

“We do,” Barstow held a clipboard out to him. “And the sooner the better.”

 

Face picked up the pen.

 

___________________

 

The hardest thing that Face had done in a long while was to stand and watch as Sophia had been taken away from him and into theatre. The doors had swung shut behind her and he’d just stood there, feeling helpless and frustrated and wanting to run after her and drag her back again. A passing nurse had taken pity on him then and offered to take him back to the relatives’ room but it was on the way along the quiet corridors that Face had seen the little chapel and excused himself to duck inside.

 

It had been a long, long time since he’d found himself sitting in the pew of a church of any kind but even this tiny little room, made to look like the inside of an old and ornate church, gave him that same sense of safety and peace he’d first experienced as a child. The room was empty, silent, tiny candles flickering on the alter, faux stained glass windows set up to look as if sunlight was streaming in from outside, casting beautiful patterns on the floor and the wooden pews. Face closed his eyes and did something else he’d not done in a long while, he prayed.

 

The words came easily, far more easily than they ever had as he asked, begged really, that God would look after Sophia, that He would protect her, give her the strength to get through this and have a chance at the wonderful life that Face knew she could have. He felt selfish with his requests, he knew that there were families all over the hospital, State, _world_ , who were also in fear for loved ones but it didn’t stop him from doing it anyway, there were no lengths that he wouldn’t go to for his children, or for Hannibal, he lived for them and would die for them without a thought. Given that, it was nothing to sit in that silent oasis with his head bowed and beg a god he had largely ignored for many a year to save his daughter. It was only when he felt tears splash onto his bare knees that he realised he was crying.

 

He sat for a while longer, watched as his tears ran slowly through the hairs on his legs to soak into the hem of his shorts then took a deep breath and spoke out loud, “Charissa, honey, I don’t know if you can hear me, if you ever hear me when I tell you about the children.” He and Sosa certainly had their issues, he’d long ago realised that they were toxic for each other, that they may have been able to produce such wonderful creatures as their children together but live together? That was a step too far. Didn’t mean he didn’t love her though, he supposed he always would, and it certainly didn’t stop him from wanting her to be their mom, even though she was no longer with them all. “But I need you, now. Sophia needs you, she needs to you to help her fight to stay with us.”

 

He stopped then, closed his eyes tightly as his throat seemed to want to squeeze itself shut and waited, breathing deeply until he could continue. “Have you seen her recently? She’s so smart, just like you, and beautiful, Christ, she’s stunning. I look at her and I think of you and I know you’d have been so damn proud of her,” a smile tugged at his lips a little. “And when she shouts at me and tells me she won’t and stamps her foot, well that’s you as well, and maybe a little bit of me and we did such a great job in making her except for her heart, hey? Guess we couldn’t quite get that bit right – kind of sums us up.”

 

He rubbed at his eyes. “Anyway, she needs you right now, honey. She needs you to tell her how strong she is, how hard she needs to fight, how much we need her to stay here with us. I know you miss her, but don’t take her from me, from Jonny, please Charissa, don’t take her…” he had to stop again as the sobs choked him and for a moment he just let them come and rip out of him, safe in the knowledge that he was alone here with no one who needed him to be strong, no one who expected him to man up. But that wasn’t a luxury he could afford for long, not when he still had so much to do and so many people to talk to.

 

He wiped his face with shaking hands. “I know you won’t, I know you wouldn’t do that to her, but, Charissa, please do what you can. I know you will. I know you love her. Stay beautiful,” a sad little smile tugged at his lips again – she would always be that in his heart and slowly, reluctantly, he pushed up from the pew.

 

He found his own way back to the relatives’ room and sank into one of the faux-leather chairs, pulling his phone out and preparing for the calls he needed to make. At least he had answers now though, he reassured himself, at least he’d saved the others from the blind terror he’d felt in arriving here in the dark. At some point he’d flicked his phone onto silent and stared at it now, the anxiety twisting inside him as he registered the ‘fifteen missed calls’ notification. It was then he realised how late it was, how Jonny would have finished school himself by now. Hannibal had been due to get them both, fuck, what would he have thought when Sophia failed to come out? Face felt sick, how could time have passed so damn quickly?

 

He lifted a finger to connect the call but jumped in his seat instead as the door crashed open and suddenly Hannibal was standing there, the same terror in his eyes that Face knew had been in his when he’d arrived at the hospital earlier that afternoon. He was on his feet in a moment, arms raised, reaching for Hannibal as he moved. “It’s okay, she’s in theatre, she’s alive, it’s okay.”

 

They crashed into each other, the nurse who’d escorted Hannibal to the room silently stepping away and closing the door behind her. Face felt Hannibal's grip on him, so tight it almost squeezed the air from his lungs and he held on just as tight, trying to expel the fear from Hannibal’s heart, trying to make it better. Hannibal was sobbing into Face’s neck, real, ragged sobs the like of which Face had never heard before and they pulled the tears from him own eyes once again. “It’s okay,” he soothed, “she’s still with us, John, she’s okay, it’s going to be fine.”

 

Face managed to manoeuvre them both down onto the old, saggy sofa and leaned back into the cushions, taking Hannibal with him as the older man desperately tried to get a grip on his emotions. He closed his eyes and clutched Hannibal to him and acknowledged that maybe his plan hadn’t been the best. Maybe he should have called earlier, should have realised that both he and Sophia would have been missed. He wondered absently how many other families had sat on this sofa and held each other and cried. He wondered what their ending had been, if they’d had to go home at the end without their loved one or if, like Sophia would, they had pulled through. It was a sobering thought.

 

Minutes passed and Hannibal's sobs slowly quietened until he pulled himself up from Face’s chest and sat on the edge of the sofa, face in his hands as he wiped away the remains of his tears.

 

“I’m sorry,” Face’s voice was barely a breath as he reached out and placed his palm on Hannibal’s back. “I know I should have called you. I just,” he shook his head, “I guess I was trying to keep you in the dark for as long as I could. Not worry you until I had an answer to give. I was just going to call now.” The words sounded empty, even to his own ears.

 

“The school called me,” Hannibal's voice was rough. “They’d already sent some of Sophia’s friends home; they’d been there when school staff had to perform CPR on her,” Face closed his eyes, “I gather they were pretty hysterical. Ms. Mayflower was worried about Jonny, worried he’d hear what had happened at recess.”

 

“Is he okay?” and now Face was flushed in shame – he’d been happy in thinking he was the only one to be carrying the burden of knowing, he should have realised it wasn’t the case.

 

“Yeah. BA’s got him, they’re just hanging out. He’s pretty quiet, which is odd.”

 

It was odd. Unless he was asleep, Jonny was _never_ quiet.

 

“Murdock’s on his way back,” he’d been in Atlanta, “So is Adele.”

 

“She didn’t have to do that.”

 

“Face,” Hannibal turned and Face was struck by how worn down he looked. “Of course she’s coming back. She’s worried, wants to be here for us, for Sophia. We all want to be here for her.”

 

Face closed his eyes again, after so many years together he was adept at knowing just when Hannibal was pointing out a fault. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Hannibal reached for him and pulled him close once more. “When will you realise that you don’t have to do things on your own anymore?”

 

Frowning, Face looked up at him. “That’s not what it was, Hannibal, I swear. I _know_ you are always here for me, I know you care, I was just trying to protect you all.”

 

Hannibal leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips, an acknowledgement, an apology, Face wasn’t sure but then his eyes took on a darker edge. “Tell me everything.”

 

So Face did, from the phone call in the store to seeing Sophia in the ER, his conversation with Dr. Barstow and his realisation that he’d missed Hannibal’s calls. He skipped the part about his breakdown in the chapel.

 

When he’d finished, Hannibal sat back in the seat, his mind whirling around the implications of Face’s words, his fingers firmly gripping Face’s own. “So, it really is going to be that simple?” he asked. “They inflate this balloon, it stretches her aorta and – problem solved?”

 

“Well, she’ll still have the HLHS.”

 

“Yes, but she’ll be as well as she was last week? Last month?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Hannibal nodded. “And this procedure, a ninety-nine percent chance of success?”

 

“That’s what Barstow said.”

 

Hannibal smiled then which transformed him and Face couldn’t help smiling back even if it was a little watery and strained. “Then we’re okay, sweetheart. This is going to be okay.”

 

______________________  

   

Of course, it wasn’t quite that easy. Dr. Barstow was a long time coming to speak to Face and Hannibal and when he did, his grave expression almost gave Face his own heart attack.

 

“She’s in recovery now and it all went well, but we had to stop her heart to get the balloon in place, the aorta was narrower than we’d thought.” Face was glad it had all been just thrown out there, that Barstow hadn’t tiptoed around it but still, he was having trouble in working out if that was positive or not.

 

“But that’s okay?”

 

“It made the procedure more difficult, but yes.”

 

Handshakes were exchanged and Barstow left and as only one adult was allowed into Paediatric Intensive Care, Hannibal did too after holding Face tightly and promising him he’d be back later after Jonny was in bed and all the adults were updated. He promised to call the Sosas as well, something that Face had been dreading.

 

Sophia had woken up just as the rest of the hospital was going to sleep and Face had found that very, very hard. She’d been in pain, frightened and distressed and he’d held her hand and reassured her as much as he could whilst she was checked over and given enough pain medication to send her off to sleep again, Face propped in the chair at her side.

 

The following morning had been better and, as the sunlight streamed through the windows of the hospital, she’d been moved to a regular room with an en-suite and an extra couch bed and Face was starting to think that maybe Hannibal was right and maybe they could get through all this in one piece and that’s when the terror in her eyes and the hand pressed flat to her chest had him pressing the call button over and over and over as he alternated between telling Sophia that everything was fine and yelling towards the door for some help.

 

The nurses came and bundled him out of the way, talking to Sophia in soothing tones and injecting things into the cannula in the back of her hand. Slowly she stilled and slipped into sleep and Face sat in shocked terror once more, wondering if she was going die on him, right here, right now in this room as he sat at her side, totally helpless. The nurses could tell him nothing, but promised that Dr. Barstow was on his way over and would talk to him as soon as he could.

 

Hannibal arrived before the doctor, with a basket full of cakes and books, a posy of flowers and a huge bunch of helium balloons in various shades of pink, blue and lilac. He leaned against the wall next to the window, his gifts abandoned on the table as he and Face just watched Sophia as she slept and waited for the doctor to arrive.

 

When he did, he checked her over thoroughly, printed off a trace from her heart monitor which he studied intently and even did an ultrasound using a portable unit. After that he invited Face and Hannibal along to a private room for his verdict.

 

“Gentlemen,” Face, still dressed in the clothes that he’d gone to the store in the day before, gripped Hannibal’s hand ferociously. “You can see that I’ve given Sophia a very thorough check over and I have to say, I can’t find anything that would explain the chest pain she experienced earlier this morning.” The two men just stared at him. “The best I can offer is that it was just post-operative pain. A muscle spasm, something like that. The blood flow through the left ventricle is as good as can possibly be expected, I see nothing that concerns me.”

 

The silence stretched on until Hannibal managed to make some words out of his confused tumble of thoughts. “She wasn’t having another heart attack then?”

 

“No, she wasn’t.”

 

“And she’s going to be okay?” This was Face and immediately he could have kicked himself for now pathetic that must have sounded to the doctor.

 

Barstow, however, only forced out a flat kind of smile. “Face, you know the nature of this condition as well as I do. The oldest current survivors of HLHS are just creeping into their forties. She could be one of them, she could get married and have children, some survivors have. Or…”

 

Face closed his eyes, “She couldn’t.”

 

“We’ll just have to go on doing what we’ve been doing for all this time. I’ll increase her check-ups to monthly once she’s been discharged and we’ll maybe see about trying her on some medication to thin her blood a little, just in the short term.” Face nodded. “But for today, I’m happy with what I’ve seen. I’ve asked the nurses to route her heart trace down to their station so they can watch it – other than that we’re back as we were. Building her back up again for discharge in a few days. Maybe even back at school in a couple of weeks.”

 

“I think the school staff are all in shock after what happened,” Hannibal’s voice was low and dark and made Face shudder.

 

“We can arrange for a specialist nurse to go and see them. There’s no doubt at all that whoever did CPR on her until the EMTs arrived saved her life. It would be an excellent idea for anyone around her to know what to do in an emergency and, to be honest, that’s good advice for anyone, anywhere.” He stood and the others followed his lead. “Are we all okay with this, now?”

 

Face held out his hand. “As okay as I suppose we’ll ever get.”

 

Barstow shook his hand and then Hannibal's. “I’ll see you again this afternoon, but try not to worry too much. She’s definitely over the worst.”

 

By the Sunday, Sophia was sitting up in bed and colouring, one of the many DVDs that BA had brought down for her playing in the background. “You not watching the Superbowl, daddy?” she asked as Face received yet another texted update from Murdock.

 

He looked over and smiled at her, marvelling at how young she looked all of a sudden, nothing like the almost-young-lady she often pretended to be. “No, I’m fine. I’m happy just watching you.” And he was, it was as if she were a precious flower and he was suddenly aware of how rare that bloom was.

 

She smiled back and went on with her colouring, waiting in silence until two more text alerts came through before she spoke again. “Am I going to die?”

 

Face almost balked at that and his eyes flew up from the screen of his phone to focus on Sophia as she calmly continued her colouring. He got up from his seat and crossed the room, perching on the edge of the bed and taking her hand, stopping the movement of her pencil and whispering her name. “Look at me, sweetheart.” She did, and there was that absolute fear he’d seen on Hannibal's face back in the relatives’ room; as awful as it had been on Hannibal, on Sophia it was horrific. “There was a problem with your heart-”

 

“A bigger problem than usual?”

 

“Yes. One of the tubes was scarred from the operations you had as a baby and it was squeezing shut, stopping the blood from getting through.”

 

“My aorta?”

 

“That’s right.” They’d already been through all of this, a specialist nurse had come with pictures and cartoons and explained it all to her but maybe that had been a little soon, maybe the trauma had been a little too fresh for the words to sink in. “But Dr. Barstow fixed it for you, opened the aorta with a tiny balloon and now the blood can flow just fine again.”

 

“I’m not going to die?”

 

Face smiled at her even though he felt like his own heart was breaking apart in his chest. “The doctor has fixed it,” he repeated. “You’re going to have a few more check-ups in the next few months but everyone is really happy with how you’re doing. In a few days you can come home, school in a couple of weeks, totally back to normal.” He couldn’t lie to her and promise that everything was fixed, not when her future was so uncertain.

 

He’d seemed to have said enough though and she went back to her colouring as Face watched her carefully. “When are you going away next?”

 

He smoothed her dark, dark hair back, “Not until you’re back at school.”

 

She looked up at that, the first hint of a smile he’d seen in days on her lips. “Really?”

 

Face’s own smile cracked open in reply. “Truly.”

 

She laughed and let her eyes drift over to the big ending of Tangled currently playing on the flat screen on the wall and Face just watched her, knowing that the final eighteen months of these two years he’d promised Hannibal and the guys could not count down fast enough for him. Not at all.  


End file.
